[-] Ranvier@lemmy.world 48 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I just wanted to double check, and holy crap it's real:

www.leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2021/05/fact-check-this-oil-disposal-tip-was-in-popular-science-magazine-in-1963-but-it-was-not-a-good-idea-then-and-it's-not-a-good-idea-now.html

How to fuck up the water table in your surrounding area real fast.

Fun fact, doing this could create a monetary liability far in excess of the value of your home and property.

[-] Ranvier@lemmy.world 64 points 4 months ago

Is bribery and corruption an ideology?

[-] Ranvier@lemmy.world 116 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Slight correction on that vaccine, the FDA doesn't authorize any drug for sale in the US that hasn't passed it's rigorous trials and gone through its approval process. It's currently being tested and has more trials ongoing right now. FDA will be able to approve it for sale if it passes its trials.

https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2023.41.16_suppl.9135

Also the word cancer vaccine kind of implies cure to some, but it's not by any means:

"MST was 10.83 months for vaccinated vs. 8.86 months for non-vaccinated. In the Phase III trial, the 5-year survival rate was 14.4% for vaccinated subjects vs. 7.9% for controls."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5346887/

So it might be a useful tool but just don't want to get hopes up unnecessarily. People who's immune system reacted to the vaccine the strongest did best, so current trials are focused on combining it with an immune checkpoint inhibitor drug to increase the immune response even more hopefully (and those drugs are already being used by themselves in cancer). These drugs block "checkpoints" in the immune system that would normally stop it from attacking things like yourself, which we kind of want it to do in cancer.

Not saying I support an embargo in Cuba, I don't, just don't want this comment to be inadvertently read as "Cuba has had the cure to lung cancer this whole time and you're not allowed to have it!" which isn't true.

[-] Ranvier@lemmy.world 46 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

MRSA is just a version of staph aureus that is resistant to some common antibiotics. The antibiotic resistant version is common everywhere now since we use so much antibiotics. The antibiotic resistant version doesn't make someone sicker in and of itself than the non resistant version, it just doesn't respond to some antibiotics. From context I gather this was MRSA pneumonia.

Staph aureus lives on all of our skin, mouth and external surfaces. It's not like something you catch, it's something that's already there and takes advantage of an opening, like a wound, lungs already damaged by a recent flu virus or something, or a weakened immune system. It's common that people in the hospital get staph infections, because they're already there for something else making them sick that gives staph an opening. Strokes are also more common in hospitalized patients that are sick with other things. Strokes usually aren't directly related to an infection, but the pro inflammatory response can increase clotting and make a stroke more likely. Strokes also can inversely make pneumonia more likely, if you have trouble swallowing and saliva and secretions are going down the wrong tube, then it creates an easy way for bacteria from your mouth like staph to get to the lungs and start up a pneumonia.

Tldr: MRSA is on your skin right now, don't worry about it too much, don't overuse antibiotics

[-] Ranvier@lemmy.world 70 points 6 months ago

From an article linked within the article:

Despite the plaudits, China in fact sat on releasing the genetic map, or genome, of the virus for more than a week after three different government labs had fully decoded the information. Tight controls on information and competition within the Chinese public health system were to blame, according to dozens of interviews and internal documents.

Chinese government labs only released the genome after another lab published it ahead of authorities on a virologist website on Jan. 11.

If it weren't for this scientist it would have taken even longer to get the dna sequence (and even longer for the life saving vaccines). And the whole time Chinese government labs already had the sequence and were refusing to share it with the world despite the World Health organization and scientists around the world begging them to.

[-] Ranvier@lemmy.world 68 points 6 months ago

Republicans of course voted against any fines at all:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/fcc-fines-big-three-carriers-196m-for-selling-users-real-time-location-data/

Now with a 3-2 democratic majority on fcc a lot is getting done. One of Biden's nominees was stonewalled by the senate for years (ISPs launched a huge smear campaign against her, even the daily mail of all things went after her). Biden had to relent and finally nominated someone else who got approved late 2023, finally breaking the 2-2 deadlock that Republicans were using to block everything like this including net neutrality.

[-] Ranvier@lemmy.world 53 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

First of all, it's not like Biden sat down and wrote these himself. Appointees by Biden at the health and human service administration directed these rules be written by civil servants who work at the department. Changes to regulations have to follow the processes laid out in the laws originally passed by congress giving the agency the authority to write that regulation. Usually that involves a long process of research, mandatory waiting periods, comments, legal reviews, votes by administrators, etc. These new rules began to be drafted in January 2022. Here's all about 600 pages of them. It's not something like, Biden rolled out of bed this morning and decided to reverse lgbtq discrimination in healthcare finally to help himself in the election. The rule this is replacing/updating for instance had work on it begin in 2015 that didn't finish until 2020.

If the complex processes for these new regulations aren't followed then they aren't drawing their power from any law, and they'll be struck down by courts in a heartbeat. This happened to a lot of Trump's incompetent administrators who had a lot of hastily passed or incorrectly passed regulations that didn't survive legal review.

https://www.vox.com/2021/1/19/22239074/affordable-clean-energy-rule-vacated-trump-court-climate-change-obama-biden

[-] Ranvier@lemmy.world 52 points 6 months ago

The law is written on a false non medical premise, so it's not possible for any doctor to interpret because it's nonsense divorced from reality.

There is no such thing as some clear line in medicine between, ah now instead of just grievous injury she will certainly die without an abortion at this point so let's do it now and she'll be fine. There may be black and whites at some extreme ends, but mostly there's just a spectrum of constantly changing grey probabilities.

This is all total fiction that exists only in the head of pro lifers and the people writing these laws. Even if that fiction was reality, there's a non zero chance that prosecutors will harass people performing abortions anyways, and they'll bring in their own hack experts saying no that abortion wasn't necessary, and the judgement is done by a jury of lay people not doctors with medical expertise, good chance the doctors get thrown in jail anyways in this fictional universe pro lifers have created.

There's just no practical reality where a law that only "protects life of the mother" can exist. Legislators need to stay out of the doctors office and let pregnant individuals make the decisions with the assistance of doctors, only then can the life and health of the mother actually be protected.

[-] Ranvier@lemmy.world 48 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Caroline Svarre, whose parents paid to have her transported by two strangers in the middle of the night to Trails Carolina when she was 14, said she was “in shock” her first day.

Yup, also one that does the middle of the night kidnaps for maximum trauma infliction.

Shockingly, the treatment guidelines for panic disorder also don't inlude zipping people into small bags all night:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478076/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6354045/

They should be shut down permanently, and those responsible for these policies held criminally liable.

[-] Ranvier@lemmy.world 69 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

It's just a multiple choice test with question prompts. This is the exact sort of thing an LLM should be very good at. This isn't chat gpt trying to do the job of an actual doctor, it would be quite abysmal at that. And even this multiple choice test had to be stacked in favor of chat gpt.

Because GPT models cannot interpret images, questions including imaging analysis, such as those related to ultrasound, electrocardiography, x-ray, magnetic resonance, computed tomography, and positron emission tomography/computed tomography imaging, were excluded.

Don't get me wrong though, I think there's some interesting ways AI can provide some useful assistive tools in medicine, especially tasks involving integrating large amounts of data. I think the authors use some misleading language though, saying things like AI "are performing at the standard we require from physicians," which would only be true if the job of a physician was filling out multiple choice tests.

[-] Ranvier@lemmy.world 63 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Republicans? Making up outlandish lies as an excuse to force themselves into your doctor's office and making your own private health care decisions for you? No, I don't believe it, not the party of small government /s

But seriously, extra ironic Republicans would pick a story illustrating so well how wrong it is what they're trying to do, then twist it to make it into some kind of false anti abortion story. Unfortunately their base will probably just gobble this up as fact and never learn the truth of the case.

[-] Ranvier@lemmy.world 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

https://archive.is/eo6Z2

I don't know how anyone could disagree with Kagan here in good faith. Of course congress has the power to regulate the supreme court. They've passed numerous regulations for the court in the past, and the constitution expressly gives the power to regulate the specifics of the court to congress. Even the number of justices in the court is chosen by congress. It wasn't nine until they passed a bill saying it was. And congress can impeach and remove justices too. I think the more corrupt members of the court just fear any actual oversight happening for once.

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Ranvier

joined 1 year ago